ASN Report 2018

PROVENCE-ALPES-CÔTE D’AZUR REGIONAL OVERVIEWOF NUCLEAR SAFETY AND RADIATION PROTECTION Magenta storage warehouse – CEA Centre The Magenta facility (BNI 169), which replaces the MCMF currently being decommissioned, has been dedicated since 2011 to the storage of non-irradiated fissile material and the non-destructive characterisation of the nuclear materials received. The removal of the material stored in the MCMF, which ended in December 2017, has lowered the activity levels in the facility. In 2018, the CEA submitted a file relating to the application for authorisation to commission new glove boxes, and it is currently being examined. The safety of the facility is satisfactory. The CEA must nevertheless guarantee the maintaining of skills, in view of the significant personnel changes in the facility. Effluent advanced management and processing facility (Agate) – CEA Centre The Agate facility (BNI 171), commissioned in 2014 to replace BNI 37-B undergoing decommissioning, uses an evaporation process to concentrate radioactive liquid effluents containing mainly beta and gamma emitting radionuclides. The Agate facility evaporator could not be used from 1 August 2017 to 8 October 2018 because deposits were discovered on the internal walls of the tank during its periodic inspection, causing interruption of the inspection. The CEA removed these deposits and put the evaporator back into service in 2018. This fortuitous discovery highlighted the need for the CEA to have buffer storage capacities for radioactive effluents in the facility and in the facilities that produce the effluents, the volumes of which increase significantly during periods when the evaporator is out of service. ASN considers that the level of safety, radiation protection and environmental protection in the Agate facility is on the whole satisfactory. Jules Horowitz Reactor project – CEA Centre The Jules Horowitz Reactor (RJH, BNI 172), under construction on the Cadarache since 2009, is a pressurised-water technological irradiation reactor designed to study the behaviour of materials under irradiation and of power reactor fuels. It will also allow the production of artificial radionuclides intended for nuclear medicine. Its power is limited to 100 MWth. The construction work on the RJH installation continued in 2018, notably with the continuation of installation of the lining on the pools of the «reactor» and «nuclear annex» buildings, and the installation of the hot cell doors. In addition to this, the manufacture of the large equipment off the site is still in progress. ASN considers that the CEAmanages the RJH construction worksite satisfactorily. Management and correction of deviations are carried out with rigour and efficiency. ASN is examining the CEA’s request, addressed to the Minister responsible for nuclear safety, to push back by four years the planned facility commissioning deadline due to delays in the construction work. In 2019, the licensee must clarify its overall commissioning strategy for the facility. ITER The ITER installation (BNI 174), under construction on the Cadarache site since 2010 and adjacent to the CEA facilities, will be a fusion experimental reactor used for the scientific and technical demonstration of the control of thermonuclear fusion energy obtained by magnetic confinement of a deuterium-tritiumplasma during long-duration experiments with a significant power level (500 MWdeveloped for 400 s). This international project enjoys financial support from China, South Korea, India, Japan, Russia, the European Union and the United States, who make in-kind contributions by providing equipment for the project. Owing to the delays in project progress and in some of the R&D work necessary for its design, ASN – through its resolution 2017-DC-0601 of 24 August 2017 – has regulated the new strategy for progressive commissioning of the installation through until 2035. The construction of the site’s buildings continued in 2018, as did the manufacture of the equipment necessary for production of the first plasma, planned for 2025. During 2018, ASN also took a favourable stance with regard to the licensee’s planned modifications to the system for limiting the pressure in the vacuum chamber and the cooling system, which are major safety systems. The license must nevertheless submit additional safety studies and analyses focusing on the impact of these modifications and report on the progress of its action plan for controlling the hydrogen and dust explosion risk. The inspections of the ITER Organisation carried out by ASN conclude that the safety requirements have been satisfactorily taken into account by the entire chain of outside contractors, as from the installation design stage. Improvements have been noted for the work packages under the responsibility of the European agency. The detection and processing of safety deviations must nevertheless be improved, paying attention to the quality of the analysis of causes. In effect, noncompliance with a defined requirement concerning a minimum wall thickness, which was not detected by the licensee or the chain of outside contractors, was revealed during an ASN inspection in December 2018. 86  ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2018